


like real people do

by wombatpop



Series: Pride Month 2018 [5]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: (loosely based on), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bisexual Phryne, Childhood, F/F, First Love, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, S1E10: Death By Miss Adventure, based on a hozier song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-27 19:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15031709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wombatpop/pseuds/wombatpop
Summary: Mac asks Phryne to help solve the murder of a patient, who turns out to be something more. Phryne understands.





	like real people do

“She wasn’t just your patient, was she?” Phryne asks, but the sympathy in her tone does nothing to dull the pain Mac feels at her observation. Mac presses her lips together, holding back the words she cannot speak, and says nothing. Her expression stays in Phryne’s mind all the way home, seeps into her beautifully decorated living room like smoke, a bad taste in her mouth and a bad smell on the furniture. That resigned, repressed, deep kind of heartache, to the core, that Mac’s face betrayed, an agony extended through her inability to express it, not for a moment, not for a second, not without the knowledge of the likelihood of attracting more pain if she did. Phryne holds her whiskey glass firmly, restraining herself for fear of cracking the glass, embellishments digging into her fingers. She understands. 

Putting her glass down, she goes upstairs to the tin under her bed, a place only visited when drunk or otherwise affected, its contents nonetheless carefully arranged. There, beside Janey’s blue ribbon in its own special case, lays an old photo, tattered and stained, of a young girl, freckled and solemn, a sober gaze directed at the camera. Phryne holds it, with faintly shaking hands, and sighs. The back of the photo is annotated simply, ‘Lily’, in Phryne’s own impeccable cursive, like she’d ever forget her name, like she’d ever forget her face.

It was a first love, although many would deny it. She was a neighbour; lacking such poverty as Phryne inhabited at that time, though by no measure of means. They were fast friends, and Phryne felt with her like nothing she’d ever felt, an attachment unlike that she had with other kids, with Jane, with anyone. Phryne was devoted, completely and truly, and although she was a child, it was just as real, just as blissful and devastating as she’s ever felt as an adult.

It was never meant to be, and Phryne knew that. She knew it as they held hands for the first time, perhaps as friends, Phryne with dirt under her fingernails and a blunt bob, Lily with soft skin and long braided hair. She knew it when she told Lily that if you can love a friend like a lover, then she loved her. She knew it when Lily told her she felt the same way. She knew it when she and Lily shared their secrets, their impossible dreams, their petty and not so petty problems, and their very first kisses, behind an ancient eucalypt, behind the gazes of the adults that seemed to watch them. But sometimes the heart refuses to know the fact about which your head is certain. And so it went, a timeless story of forbidden love, entwining the both of them in a twisted dance that both know can only end in destruction.

Young girls become young women, and Lily and Phryne part, guided by the arbitrary path of time, and place, and people.

The Great War begins and ends, taking many lives with it, and the Fishers emerge, titled and wealthy. But Phryne’s lost as much as she’s gained. 

The blood never leaves her hands, now, the dirt of yesteryear replaced by a cleanliness that feels filthy although it smells like lavender. The eucalypt is gone now, ripped out of the ground with the efficiency and indifference that humanity has mastered so well. Well, perhaps only parts of it. Lily becomes just another fond memory tainted by grief, singed edges around Jane, and her parents, and Europe, and Australia; around holding a hand, around running, driving, speaking, breathing; around her body, and her mind. And Lily.

She holds this photo, a last reminder of that first love, that first heartbreak, a separation with no closure, a parting with no goodbye. She breathes it, the smell of old sorrow, the musty smell of old paper and dust, and wonders if other people have tins like this too. Her eyes are dry.

Mr Butler calls from downstairs, and Phryne almost jumps. She places the photo back in the box, closes the tin delicately, like it’s made of very thin glass, like she’s holding a bomb, and she leaves it, ready to be opened the next time one of Phryne’s scars are prodded.


End file.
